Lol, I'm going to have to case the joint to make sure the extra helpful staff member is on duty. Secret agent BIR style 

Having lived in St Andrews for about 5 years and still visting there every weekend, my local BIR has come to be The Balaka. The Balaka is a fairly upmarket BIR and won the Pat Chapman's best Indian restaurant in Britain 2001.

I go there regularly with my gf and we spend quite a lot of money. After reading their website www.balaka.com/ it talks of a herb garden and says feel free to ask for some fresh herbs to take home when visiting the restaurant.

So, I did the whole "so I hear you have a herb garden outside" thing, and one of my favourite staff members there, a middle aged Indian man, actually took me outside to this large allotment where they grow their fresh herbs and gave me some Coriander while we had a great conversation about growing herbs etc.

With friendly customer service like this, I wonder if I would be in with a chance at watching my curry being prepared, or even for them to write down their base sauce recipe, because the quality of there food is top notch.

The thing is, I wouldn't want to come across as out of line in my request as I really like these people and they give me discounts, free popodums etc, something I really don't want to put on the line  : 

How should I approach the issue of getting The Balaka to share some knowledge with me?

  What a good call. I can see it now, "The Perfect BIR Curry". What do you reckon he'd be playing you on his mp3 player?

And here it is. Lamb Madras using admins new base sauce. This was a seriously tasty curry!

This is almost certainly the best invention in the world. http://www.beermachine.com
Number one on my xmas list! I bet this baby would work a treat for my beer and curry nights... Now it can all be home made!  ;D

Hey CA, this looks great! I'm gonna knock this one up tonight with my remaining admins base sauce from la freezer! I'll put up the pictures tomorrow. Wish me luck!

I do know what you mean sns, admins new base sauce is very heavily spiced, although I did enjoy it a lot (and from the amount I made, will coninue to be enjoying for some time). I don't think the fact that I ground the Cumin and Corriander seed from fresh helped matters any ;D I'm quite keen on trying the Rajver base mentioned by CK, which he assures me is fairly lightly spiced by comparisson. Thanks for the response sns - all the best!

Good job smokenspice - your images look top notch. So to summarise, is that less chili, slightly less cumin, the addition of the curry powder, less garlic and more onion?

What did you think of it compared to admins base? I ask because I gave that a shot last week and enjoyed it a lot, although like you used slightly less chili ! Do you feel the addition of the Madras curry powder greatly affected the taste?

When I mix my spices to a paste, I use oil rather than water to try and infuse their colour and flavour into the dish, often leaving them in the oil for some time before use. I'm are sure there is more than one school of thought on this and I would be eager to hear other members opinions.

Take care and good luck with the curry's!

It seems near impossible to get this one down without the help of an impartial third party educated on BIR curry... Unless... We put rival BIR's against each other.

Have the head chefs from two or more BIRs (the more the better) go at it in separate but similar kitchens. The ingredients are written for us in list form and we will purchased by us to avoid the use of any secret ingredients. We note their methods and at the end, gather the chefs, judge the results and give the cash collected by us to 1st place. This way we also get to learn the recipes from all the other BIRs involved in the competition for free.

I Have another idea but it involves a BIR chef, kidnap and torture.

I like your opinion Jethro, I always get a feel good factor when all my ingredients are fresh and wholesome, even the tomatoes from the base sauce. It really gives me the sense of achievement that I have created something containing no synthesised products.